When I was in grade school, I often played at nights and on the weekends with a boy who lived a couple of houses from me. We would ride bikes, play video games, the usual stuff. But during the school day, I noticed he was always mean to me if I approached him when he was hanging out with his friends. I asked him about it once and he told me we were like “secret” friends. I was a girl and straight-A student and he was a jock so I guess in his mind we didn’t mix. That was the beginning of the end of our friendship.

I think that’s the message Republican leadership gives to pro-lifers. We’re secret friends. We now have the most pro-life platform in the history of the party yet the Republican candidate for president couldn’t find time in his 90-minute acceptance speech to mention the preborn. By selecting Mike Pence as his running mate, who has an exceptional record of protecting women and children form abortion, it’s supposed to be Trump’s secret signal to pro-lifers that he is accepting of pro-life principles.

From the media and my liberal friends, I often hear how “close-minded” Republicans are yet for the past several years, the RNC has championed a “big tent” approach by allowing those who hold conflicting core values to run well-financed campaigns for key seats and speak on the main stage of the convention while mocking the base of the party. I’m told we have to do it to show Americans that our party is really the party that welcomes all.

Yet on the other side, the Democratic National Committee pushes the pro-abortion position, no holds barred. For years they have punished their own members of the House of Representatives for remaining pro-life by stripping away clutch committee assignments and withholding campaign financing.

This week they will ratify a platform that for the first time calls for taxpayer-funded abortions in any stage of pregnancy, something more than 60% of Americans oppose, and give every major leader of the out-of-touch abortion lobby a speaking slot during the convention. Oh, and the head of EMILY’s List is a leading candidate for the DNC Chair position that just opened up.

The Democrats don’t care that they are losing in the polls on every issue surrounding abortion (20-week ban, parental consent, etc). They remain loyal to their friends and hope their push-hard-enough-against-a-negative-and-it-will-turn-positive strategy works.

The GOP should take note. If the Republican Party would hold hard and fast to our moral truths such as the right to life, we would have better candidates and elected officials that don’t betray pro-life principles, and in turn, create stronger support from the base.

Abortion will become unthinkable when both parties are trying to earn the pro-life vote. This generation of Millennials, where only 17% support the extreme position of the DNC and their nominee, will usher in that new day, as soon as the Cecile Richards’ and IIsyle Hogue's of my mother’s generation retire.

In the meantime, the Republican Party, the party that spearheaded the civil rights movement and was formed to end slavery, needs to find the strength to stick up to candidates and, more importantly, the funders who claim to simply be a “fiscal conservative.” Where else will they turn with their millions in donations? They need you as much as you need them.

Pro-life Democrats should read their own party’s own platform. They are sadly not welcome. If pro-life Democrats want change inside their party, they cannot continue to support pro-abortion Democrats. They will either have to cross the aisle or stand up to the radicalism in their own party to be taken seriously.